If you recognise a thought is distorted, remember that it’s ‘just a thought’ rather than a fact – not everything your mind tells you is true. You can choose whether you attribute value to the thought or whether it’s best ignored.
| ‘All-or-nothing’ / black-and-white thinking | ‘If I’m not perfect, I’ve failed’ |
| Mental filter | Paying attention selectively to evidence. i.e. noticing failures but not successes |
| Jumping to conclusions | Mind reading: imagining we know what others are thinking Fortune telling: predicting the future |
| Emotional reasoning | Assuming that feelings = facts. ‘I feel embarrassed so I must be a loser’ |
| Over-generalising | Seeing a pattern based on one or two examples, or being overly broad in conclusions |
| Disqualifying the positive | Discounting good things that have happened |
| Magnification/catastrophising, and minimisation | Blowing things out of proportion, or shrinking something so that it seems less important |
| Should / Must | Using critical language like ‘should’ or ‘must’ can make you feel guilt as if you’ve already failed. When applied to others – we often feel frustrated |
| Labelling | Assigning labels to yourself or others that limits the scope of possibilities e.g. ‘They’re an idiot’ |
| Personalisation | Blaming yourself or taking responsibility for something that wasn’t your fault. Conversely, blaming other people for something that was your fault. |
